


Fatherhood

by historymiss



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, kylo ren finds a baby and it ends pretty much how you'd expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 06:41:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6555703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>DISCLAIMER this is SUPPOSED to be weird, and creepy, and a bit unsettling. It’s my serious, ficcy, hopefully in-character response to ‘what if Kylo Ren had to raise a baby’. I don’t endorse Kylo or his ideas on child rearing. He’d be a terrible dad.</p><p>You have been warned.</p><p>Suggested listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHaXQ18sjgQ</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fatherhood

The child is little more than an infant, but surprisingly strong for one so young. It bawls lustily from the ruins of its parents home, surrounded by the haphazard ruins of a cradle.

Kylo Ren looks down at the child. Stoops to scoop it up. The baby only increases its crying, fists balled tightly, face turning purple with rage. The noise is almost unbearable, even through the helmet, and it doesn't take long for Kylo to realise it's echoing through the Force.

Somewhere behind the black and silver faceplate, Kylo Ren puts two and two together and, characteristically, comes up with six.

\---

“You can’t have a baby.” Hux drawls, nose set in a sneer at the sight of Kylo cradling a squalling infant. “It’s perverse, Ren.”

“You have a cat.” Ren points out, a statement that rather underlines how unqualified he is. Hux makes a disgusted noise somewhere in the back of his throat and turns in his heel to leave.

"When it dies, confine your tantrums to the hangar bay." 

 "She." 

 Hux glances back at Ren, hunched over the child like the bad spirit in a fairy tale. "She's a girl. And she's not going to die." 

“Snoke is going to give her to the stormtrooper corps. You know that, don’t you?”

Kylo Ren does not reply.

 (Snoke lets him keep her. His reasoning is simple. If Kylo Ren wishes to train his own replacement, it simply takes the task out of his master's hands.)

\---

Kylo Ren devotes himself to parenting as single-mindedly as he approaches anything else. The girl is methodically changed, fed, and cared for. She screams at him more than she smiles. Some days, he screams back. The Knights help, as much as they are able, which isn’t a great deal. Passed from hand to black-gloved hand, the girl blinks at them in turn with infant contempt.

He names her after the greatest female darksider he knows. A fine name. One to grow into. The double vowel gives her unsteady tongue trouble, however, so she names herself ‘Saji’. Kylo Ren respects this (he named himself, after all), and the name sticks. 

To her, he is neither Master (Snoke is the only Master here) nor father. She calls him Ren.

\---

The years pass. Saji does not die. Others grudgingly accept her presence. At six, she learns about dejarik from Hux, naming the pieces that she is strictly forbidden to touch. At eleven, she can strip a blaster rifle and re-assemble it under Phasma’s watchful eye. 

Saji still screams. This is nothing for her to be ashamed of. In rage, Kylo teaches her, she is powerful, and though, sometimes, Saji hears a whisper on the edge of her mind, she screams to drown it out.   

"Am I like you?” she asks Ren, as he adjusts his robes to go before Snoke and report on his latest mission. His hands go still for a moment, helmet turned so the faceplate reflects them both.

“No.” He says, quietly, to the helmet. “You’re something else.”

\---

At fifteen, she takes hold of Ren’s lightsaber and sheathes the blade deep in his chest.

“This is not sad,” he tells her, levelly, eyes fixed on hers, as he falls to his knees. "You did what you were meant to do.”

“Now run.”


End file.
